Miss Bloemfontein was not alone in disliking to recognise the presence of the British army. Her mother was not the only person who could not bear to see Englishmen marring the scenery of the pest-ridden little town. Even while the tricky among the people joined in singing "Soldiers of the Queen," one man in the crowd turned to a war correspondent and said, "You English are strutting about very proudly and confidently, and think you own the country, but when you go away from here you will be sniped at from every bush and spruit wherever you show yourself." I took a little walk up past the English Cathedral one day and saw a woman seated upon her front _stoep_, sewing. "Good morning," said I, "do you speak English?" She rose and glared at me with scorn in her eyes. "No," said she, "but I hate the English." A little girl ran out of a doorway a few houses farther along and called to me, "Mister, mister! Please wear the red, white and blue," and she pinned a knot of the British and American colours on my coat lapel. "What sort of a lady is it who lives in that house?" I asked; "she says she hates the English." "Oh, she is Dutch," the little girl replied; "almost everybody here hates you." I turned a corner and went down a side-street. Two young women in a doorway beamed upon me. I was out to study the town and the people, so I halted and engaged them in conversation. One was married, and her husband, who was of English stock, had cleverly managed to be away when the war broke out, after which he found it impossible to return and join a Boer commando as he would have had to do, being only a poor working man. "We are on the police books as English sympathisers," said one of the women. "We have had to be very careful, as we were warned that if we gave further offence we would be punished. What happened was this: You see the town is full of Germans, who have been most bitter against the English. We went to the railway station when some English prisoners were being sent to Pretoria. As the train moved off we waved our hands to them and wished them better luck. A German saw us do it, and reported us to the authorities, so we were taken up and examined, and had our names put in the 'black-book.'" A score of the honest people of the town who had been avowedly true to their English blood, which was by no means the case with all the British Uitlanders, told me that they suffered petty persecution all the time until the town was captured. Note what "Miss Uitlander" said in her reply to "Miss Bloemfontein" in THE FRIEND of March 26th:-- The "loving hand" you boast of having extended to us has long since been covered by an iron glove, the weight of which we have daily been made to feel, and to _that_ you must associate the joyful flaunting of our colours in your face. His coming meant freedom--the sweetest thing in the world--to us.